Kant's Method Research Articles

Weight Status and its Relationship with Corona Fear, Food Diversity, and Physical Activity in Children and Adolescents

Introduction: The social restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic likely influenced children's and adolescent's lifestyles and nutrition. This study sought to assess student dietary quality and physical activity levels during the pandemic, as well as examine their association with overweight risk. Methods: Four hundred and fifty-eight students aged 7–12 years old in Karaj, Iran, completed online self-administered questionnaires assessing diet, physical activity, and coronavirus fear. Using Kant's method and the Food Frequency Questionnaire, we obtained diversity scores for five food groups. Data were analyzed using R statistical software. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. Results: The mean dietary diversity score (DDS) was the lowest for the meat group and highest for the fruit group. A significant inverse relationship was observed between the meat group diversity score and student weight status (P = 0.02). The interaction of coronavirus fear and weight status with the meat group DDS was also significant in multivariate adjustment modeling (P = 0.018). Among overweight students, body mass index had a meaningful negative correlation with physical activity levels (r = −0.018, P = 0.016). In addition, a significant inverse association was detected between coronavirus fear and physical activity in univariate modeling (β = −145.47, 95% confidence interval: −248.81–−42.12, P ≤ 0.006). Conclusion: A significant association between coronavirus fear and reductions in physical activity as well as weight gain was observed. The study group also did not demonstrate sufficient dietary diversity. Therefore, we recommend promoting diet variety and physical activity for students as part of health-focused school curricula.

Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan

Reviewed by: Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Omar Dahbour Dilek Huseyinzadegan. Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 204. Paperback, $34.95. In this work the author attempts two, rather different, tasks in rethinking the nature of Kant's contributions to political philosophy. First, she argues that Kant's political writings depart methodologically from his critical writings on epistemology and morality. This is the significance of her use of the term 'nonideal theory' to designate the distinctive methodology that is supposedly operative in later Kantian texts such as part 1 of the Metaphysics of Morals, and especially the essays on enlightenment, world history, and war and peace. Second, she maintains that Kant's distinctive contributions to political philosophy derive not from entailments of his moral philosophy, but from specific theses he advocates concerning the nature of legitimate government, historical progress, and international relations. The author's primary claim concerning Kant's method for thinking about political life is that it is distinct from the ideal theory used in his three critiques on epistemology, morality, and aesthetics. While the Metaphysics of Morals contains an "ideal" conception of peace (7), the nonideal theory contained in the other essays provides a guide to the "pursuit of peace" (11). On her view, Kant derives his ideal theory from "formal" notions of personhood and rights (7). But Kant was interested in more than simply working out the conceptual implications of his basic notion of moral rightness. While the central concept of Kant's moral theory is right (Recht), the corresponding concept in his political theory is "purposiveness" (Zweckmässigkeit). The latter is taken to be a "regulative principle of teleology" that justifies the existence of certain values (e.g. "perpetual peace") and institutions (e.g. a federation of states) based on the purposiveness of (human) nature leading toward these ends (10). Kant regarded political norms to be goals that are realizable through a historical process. As the author writes, this is not provable as such, but is a "useful assumption" (31). Clearly, Kant's philosophy of history plays a central role here. It is, as the author admits, a hypothetical reconstruction of world history—even, as she provocatively refers to it, a "historical novel" (27, 51)! Yet, on her account, it shows the importance of narrative in justifying, for instance, the cosmopolitan ideas that Kant espoused (42, 50). At this point, some concerns about this approach emerge. First, Kant's contribution to the philosophy of history is not, despite the author's claims, unprecedented. What is interesting in Kant's case is the particular story he told; but then the importance of Kant's input is not methodological (i.e. with respect to methodology in the philosophy of history, to which Kant contributes nothing unique), but substantive. Second, does Kant's approach truly address what the author refers to as the "feasibility concern" regarding his substantive political proposals (115)? If Kant's teleological reconstruction of human history were based on a thick, empirical account (as, for instance, Hegel's was), maybe so. But Kant's "hypothetical" history is nothing of the sort. The answers here lie not in the methodological originality of Kant's approach, but in the substantive value of the particular norms and institutions that he advocated. Above all, the idea of a cosmopolitan world order has been extremely influential. This order is, on the author's account, a possible, pragmatic result of various historical tendencies—including Kant's notion of "unsocial sociability"—rather than a simple product of postulated moral ideals. Peace, in other words, is a political goal, rather than a moral goal, and is to be achieved not on the basis (only) of moral incentives, but also of the practical incentive of peoples' need for accommodation with one another (102–3). This practical incentive gives rise to the three political proposals that Kant advocates: republican government, a federation of states, and a right of hospitality (117). The combined effect of the enactment of these proposals was to be the condition of "perpetual peace" that Kant envisaged as the necessary end of world history (13). There are, however, some reasons...

Method in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACTFor Kant as for Hegel method is not a structure or procedure imported into philosophy from without, as, e.g. a mathematical demonstration in modern physics or in the proof-structure of philosophies such as Spinoza’s or Wolff’s. For both Hegel and Kant method is the arrangement that reason gives its contents and cognitions; for both, that is, method and object do not fall asunder, unlike in all disciplines other than philosophy. For Kant method is the design and plan of the whole, the scientific form that guides the organization of cognitions (KrV A 707/B 736, Ak 24, 780). Likewise, Hegel writes that method is the consciousness of the form of its inner movement (WL 1, 49, SL 53, W 3 47, PhS 28). Unfortunately, Hegel never considers Kant an example or a precursor or a positive role model. It is important to ask why Hegel never takes seriously Kant’s Doctrine of Method. Why, if he shares so many central points with the Architectonic of the first Critique, does he never acknowledge Kant as a possible ally? Why does he misunderstand Kant on analysis and synthesis as he does? These are some of the questions I plan to discuss in this paper.

Kant's method of teaching philosophy

Kant's method of teaching philosophy

Analysing the Good Will: Kant's Argument in the First Section of the Groundwork

This article contends that the first section of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a sophisticated and valid argument, and that commentators are therefore mistaken in dismissing this section as flawed. In particular, the article undertakes to show that in this section Kant argues from a conception of the goodness of a good will to two distinctive features of moral goodness, and from these features to his ‘formula of universal law’. The article reveals the sophistication and validity of this argument by considering it in the light of a number of criticisms that are commonly levelled at the section. In conclusion, the article proposes that this interpretation of the section also has significant implications for the understanding of Kant's method, his formulas and his basic conception of the ‘moral’.

A Method for Conceptualising Legal Domains. An Example from the Dutch Unemployment Benefits Act

There has been much talk of the need to build intermediate models of the expertise required preparatory to constructing a knowledge-based system in the legal domain. Such models offer advantages for verification, validation, maintenance and reuse. As yet, however, few such models have been reported at a useful level of detail. In this paper we describe a method for conceptualising legal domains as well as its application to a substantial fragment of the Dutch Unemployment Benefits Act (DUBA). We first discuss the intermediate models (called expertise models), then present a three-stage method for their construction, drawing on the CommonKADS work in knowledge acquisition, conceptual models of statute law, and the KANT method of knowledge analysis. Subsequently, we describe how these techniques were applied to the DUBA, and provide detailed examples of the resulting model. Finally, conclusions on the framework and guidelines are given as well as means of recording and presenting the various design choices.

Natural Law, Skepticism, and Methods of Ethics

In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant presented a method for discovering what morality requires us to do in any situation and claimed that it is a method everyone can use. The method consists in testing one's maxim against the requirement stated in the formulations of the categorical imperative. There has been endless discussion of the adequacy of Kant's method in giving moral guidance, but there has been little effort to situate Kant's view of ethical method in its historical context. In

"Laws of Freedom: A Study of Kant's Method of Applying the Categorical Imperative in the 'Metaphysik der Sitten,'" by Mary J . Gregor

"Laws of Freedom: A Study of Kant's Method of Applying the Categorical Imperative in the 'Metaphysik der Sitten,'" by Mary J . Gregor

VIII.—NEW BOOKS

Journal Article VIII.—NEW BOOKS Get access Laws of Freedom: A study of Kant's method of applying the Categorical Imperative in the Metaphysik der Sitten. By MARY J. GREGOR. Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Pp. xv + 208. 25s. GRAHAM BIRD GRAHAM BIRD Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mind, Volume LXXV, Issue 298, April 1966, Pages 297–298, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXXV.298.297 Published: 01 April 1966